Chapter 6: 6 The Longevity Lamp

Zhou Fuxue bowed slightly. “Greetings, Senior Brother.”

The youth looked impatient. He gave a careless nod, didn’t deign to speak, and flickered past the black smoke into Buzhiya. At once, the Eldest Senior Brother’s voice drifted out: “Old Nine, what demon wind blew today, to blow you out of your courtyard? Is that ‘Wind Arising from the Hollow Cave’ of yours finished yet?”

Zhou Fuxue hesitated a moment before stepping inside.

Mingzhu’s Buzhiya differed little in layout from Wenxian Residence. Across the vast courtyard, apart from the path of bluestone slabs, fallen leaves lay layered over every patch of ground—whether by design or sheer laziness in sweeping, it was unkempt yet quietly secluded.

Mingzhu stood in the long covered gallery extending from the house, head tilted back, hanging wind-chimes. Ninth Senior Brother lounged against a small side table with not a shred of sitting posture, listening with open impatience to the Eldest Senior Brother’s endless chatter, turning an empty cup over and over in his hands as if deliberating whether to smash it against that punchable back of Mingzhu’s head.

Mingzhu hung the last wind-chime, turned, spotted Zhou Fuxue, and beckoned at once. “Come, come—sit here. The food will be ready soon.”

Zhou Fuxue gave an “mm” and obediently sat—whereupon Ninth Senior Brother’s brow seemed to crease, and he shifted aside with visible disgust, revulsion nearly leaping from his eyes.

Zhou Fuxue: “……”

He looked down at his own neatly kept clothes, then at Ninth Senior Brother’s bedraggled state, and for a moment genuinely could not tell what exactly this senior brother found so objectionable about him. Cleanliness?

Oblivious to the undercurrents, Mingzhu flicked up his hem and sat. “What did you come here for?”

Ninth Senior Brother Lu Qingkong said nothing. He set the two tin plates from his sleeve on the table; the Talisman script on them shimmered—and a string of sound arose from thin air.

“……those demons with power to summon wind and rain may well have been hunted to extinction by humanity on nothing but trumped-up charges……”

The more Mingzhu listened, the less right it felt—until it dawned on him that this was his own drivel, delivered so glibly at morning lesson. His face changed on the spot. He reached out and scrambled the two tin plates askew, declaring with utmost righteousness, “Ninth Brother! If you have business, just say the word—I’d cross mountains of blades and seas of fire to get it done for you.”

Zhou Fuxue: “……”

He had witnessed, from start to finish, the Eldest Senior Brother spouting coward’s words with a fully righteous face, and dearly wished he could blush on the man’s behalf.

Lu Qingkong wasted no words. “For this trip to Hundred Swords Mountain—I’m going.”

Once every two years, the Sect Master appointed disciples to go to the Sword Peak and seek out the weapon that belonged to them. Once a weapon acknowledged its master, an Artifact Spirit would form upon the master’s reaching Core Formation and follow him until death, when it would return at last to the Sword Tomb. Lu Qingkong had been on Rizhao Mountain ten years, and for want of sufficient cultivation had never once been permitted to make the journey.

Mingzhu refused without a thought. “No. Your cultivation is too low. Years ago, when Old Five led people to Hundred Swords Mountain, Master wouldn’t even let you tag along. And this time it’s me going in person—Master would sooner die than entrust you safely to me. No, no, too dangerous.”

Lu Qingkong sneered, tucked away the tin plates, and smiled without a trace of warmth. “Then I’ll just take this Sound-Gathering Array and go ask his venerable self whether it’s permissible, shall I?”

Mingzhu: “……”

For all that he was Rizhao’s First Disciple, Mingzhu had less spine than an Outer Sect Disciple. He froze for a long moment, then hummed and hawed like a famed courtesan being pressed into service, resisting even as she yielded: “Th-then I’ll speak to Master nicely about it.”

Lu Qingkong was a blunt, direct sort. His goal achieved, he rose to leave on the spot.

Mingzhu: “Hey, hey—I’ve agreed, haven’t I? Give me the Sound-Gathering Array back!”

Lu Qingkong said, “Once the matter is done, I will naturally destroy the array.”

Lu Qingkong’s methods might have been unorthodox, but he always kept his word. Mingzhu breathed a sigh of relief, and his sidelong glance caught the kitchen. Holding no grudge, he extended a warm invitation at once: “Well, you’re here already—don’t run off. Stay and share a meal your Senior Brother cooked personally.”

At the mention of food, Lu Qingkong seemed sorely tempted to stay—at the final sentence, he bolted like a rabbit and vanished in a blink.

Mingzhu muttered, “Really, no tact at all. Every time, runs off so fast.”

Zhou Fuxue, silent this whole while, abruptly developed a bad feeling.

When the Eldest Senior Brother proudly carried out the finished dishes, Zhou Fuxue’s face was all cold indifference. I take back what I said earlier. The Eldest Senior Brother truly is only good for his face.

Mingzhu had burned dish after dish, every one a clump of blackened sludge. Perhaps even he felt embarrassed, so he picked a few peaches from the back courtyard and split them—one for each of them.

Zhou Fuxue looked at the peaches, still beaded with water, and genuinely could not compose an appropriate expression.

Mingzhu, evidently used to it, demolished his peach in a few bites. “I’ll go change clothes first. Later I’ll take you to the Longevity Hall to light your lamp.”

Why light a lamp in broad daylight? Zhou Fuxue thought. Has the Senior Brother’s illness flared up again?

Having said his piece, Mingzhu grabbed Zhou Fuxue’s perfectly clean sleeve and wiped all the peach juice from his hands onto it, then sauntered inside to change, entirely satisfied.

Zhou Fuxue: “……”

Cold and unattached as his nature was, Zhou Fuxue kept his accounts of gratitude and grievance scrupulously clear. Having suffered since childhood, even the smallest kindness could make him forget old scores and repay it a hundredfold.

He had kept Mingzhu’s defense of him that morning in his heart. Whenever Mingzhu enraged him, he would replay the whole episode from beginning to end, consoling himself: He was good to you, once. No need to anger over such a small thing.

But consoling himself was one thing; he was also petty enough to record, in the ledger of his heart, the incident of Mingzhu using his sleeve as a rag: Standing up for me offsets a small portion of the rage over the rag business.

With that deduction made, his heart felt considerably lighter.

Though, at the Eldest Senior Brother’s current rate of self-destruction, that single act of standing up for him would likely be deducted away to nothing before long.

A short while later, Mingzhu emerged from his room in fresh clothes.

Ordinarily he flaunted about in those flame-red robes, burrowing wherever crowds were thickest—a single sweep of the eye would find that scorching figure in any sea of people. Today, for who knew what reason, he had actually been willing to shed that bewitching red, dressing instead in proper blue-and-white Rizhao Mountain garb. Standing there quietly, he really did carry the composed air of a proper orthodox sect’s Eldest Senior Brother.

The composed Eldest Senior Brother said, “Hey! I just remembered—right next door to the Longevity Hall is your Fifth Senior Brother’s quarters. He’s in seclusion right now. Let’s go swipe some food from him.”

Zhou Fuxue: “……”

The Longevity Hall was a towering structure standing at the very north of Rizhao Mountain. Backed against the mountain wall, the summit’s cold air and clear springs flowed down along it, freezing into long slender icicles along the upturned eaves of the galleries—a whole covering of ice crystal, truly spectacular to behold.

Mingzhu’s long hem trailed over the frost-covered steps as he led Zhou Fuxue, step by step, into that ice-sheathed tower. Their feet crushed the thin sheet of ice on the floor to pieces, and soon the mist, as if guided by some hand, froze it solid again into a shattered ice flower.

At the tower’s entrance hung a plaque bearing the three characters for “Longevity Hall,” with a line of small lettering beside it—and looking closely, that signature was unmistakably Mingzhu’s name.

Sharp-eyed, Zhou Fuxue spotted it, and stared ahead at that tall, straight figure with some bewilderment. He seemed about to ask something when Mingzhu ahead of him abruptly stopped, reached out, and pushed open the great carved door before them.

The door, long unrepaired, let out a weathered groan—and then wave after wave of soft orange light slowly met their eyes, and with it, a chill spilled out as if drifting up from Hell’s own Yellow Springs, its ominous aura enough to freeze the blood.

Zhou Fuxue was still too young; the aura drove him instinctively back a step, his fingers trembling faintly despite himself.

Mingzhu turned slightly. In his hands, he had somehow already lifted a Longevity Lamp shrouded in white gauze. It was unlit, yet for some reason it cast a faint warmth over half of Mingzhu’s face.

He held out one hand to Zhou Fuxue and said gently, “Come with me.”

Zhou Fuxue stared at him blankly—and by the time he came back to himself, his hand had already landed in the Eldest Senior Brother’s warm palm. He looked up and collided squarely with the glint of mischief in Mingzhu’s eyes.

Mingzhu winked his right eye and said softly, “Don’t be scared. It’s all just stage tricks and spookery. I’m here.”

Though two days of the Eldest Senior Brother’s antics had taught Zhou Fuxue that the man was a good-for-nothing, gilded without and rotten within, in this atmosphere of chill and gloom—like standing on the Yellow Springs Road itself—he nonetheless, miraculously, clutched Mingzhu’s hand for dear life, as if clinging to a straw in the flood.

Cold light poured down through the Longevity Hall. Where the eye fell, two colossal trees rose from the floor, their bare branches hung with cascades of tiny icicles—trees of jade and blossoms of gem, lending the whole hall an even more breathtaking splendor.

At the hall’s center stood a high platform, from which clear water welled slowly forth and spilled over the bluestone, glimmering and rippling.

Gathering his courage, Zhou Fuxue looked around—and when he lifted his head, he realized with a start that overhead, in their hundreds upon hundreds, hung nothing but Longevity Lamps, one after another after another.

The lamps floated suspended in the air, their flames swaying gently in the cold wind, and from the base of each hung a single glistening Jade Tablet, inscribed with a person’s name.

Mingzhu led his little junior brother by the hand, treading slowly along the faint currents of water, and tilted his head amid that blaze of light like burning trees and silver flowers, smiling. “These are the Longevity Lamps of every disciple on Rizhao Mountain. The Longevity Lamp is bound to life and death—the person dies, the lamp goes out. You have one too. Light it with your Spiritual Power in a moment, and you’ll formally be entered through Rizhao Mountain’s gate. Oh—mind your head…… AH!”

Even as he warned the other, he cracked his own head squarely into a lamp drifting toward him. The cold Jade Tablet slammed into his wound, and he nearly leapt straight off the floor.

“Hsss—” Clutching his forehead, Mingzhu conjured a strained smile and grabbed hold of another lamp drifting past, continuing gamely, “And lamps like these, already gone out—those belong to the dead of Rizhao. And whoever’s lamp is extinguished here in the Longevity Hall—even should they seize a body and be reborn, they will never again step onto Rizhao’s Disciples’ Steps.”

Legend held that a century ago, a Rizhao disciple had died in the mortal world, yet through some twist of fate had seized a body and returned—still the same person, but the Longevity Lamps of Rizhao would never burn for him again.

Zhou Fuxue looked at the name on the Jade Tablet beneath the extinguished lamp, then at the faint candle-glow drifting all around him—and for no reason he could name, an uncontrollable sorrow rose suddenly in his chest.

Human life is like duckweed on the water; life and death, like a candle’s flame. Brilliant as it seems, in the end it all turns to a handful of ash, scattered and gone from the world.

Dust returns to dust, earth returns to earth—birth, age, sickness, death; the fallen leaf comes home to its roots.